As expected, the tale of Sony’s Playstation Network security breach and resulting down time continues to get more complicated. What started as a simple outage is now a multifaceted tale of stolen data, communication failures, law suits, government inquiries and a whole lot of frustrated gamers.

Here’s a rundown of the many heads the PSN outage and breach has spawned as we head into the second weekend without service:

Security experts, listening in on underground forums, claimed that PSN’s hackers finagled 2.2 million credit card numbers, and now wish to sell the list for upwards of $100,000. Over at Ars Technica, some readers are claiming that they’ve experienced credit card fraud, and think the PSN breach is to blame. However, the experts who originally reported the credit card thefts are now backing off their original claims, and stressing that they can’t verify the information. Sony’s sticking to its original story, that it has no evidence of credit card theft, but can’t rule out the possibility.

Congress, meanwhile, is getting involved. A House of Representatives subcommittee has sent 13 questions to Sony, demanding answers by May 6. Some of these questions have already been answered. For instance, Sony already said when it became aware of the breach (April 19). Other questions are remain unanswered, such as why Sony can’t say with certainty that credit card numbers weren’t taken. Other governments around the world are also demanding answers from Sony.

There’s still no word on exactly when PSN service will return (Sony said on Tuesday that “we expect to have some services up and running within a week”). On the bright side, Sony suggests that it’ll try to make up for the down time with a goodwill gesture of sorts. “We are currently evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online,” says the company’s latest FAQ.

i am about to turn to xbox all my friends sold their ps3's and got xboxs.This being down this long is really hurting the company. i was told it might be up on saturday april 30th but thats probly not true and the guys at gamestop said it is going to be down for weeks or possibly months

It cant be down for months on the count of that would really hurt SONY someway somehow they have to get the network running even if it costs them their left nutsack. That would hurt production and sales if it were down for months. I have both X-Box and PS3 but i kinda like PS3 better. Better graphincs the network is free.

You should look into the phrase "you get what you pay for." Xbox live is $60 a year, and the service is immeasurably better, more stable and more robust than PSN. And for the record–anyone who thinks the "free" PSN wasn't built into the initial cost of the PS3 is kidding themselves. PS3 users have every right to complain: Perhaps this user simply wants a more secure network–the complaint likely has nothing to do with his/her "inability to play online for 2 weeks."

Danny,
You may want to check before you talk too. The Wii has sold 80million since release while 360 and ps3 are around 50 million. 360 holds the edge right now but the past two years PS3 has overtaken xbox on sales. Up until the outage PS3 was estimated to overtake the 360 however will never touch the Wii's sales. So dont insult people when you dont check facts either.

This is complete BS sony is a multi billion dollar company,and yea things happen but for this long thats sad. I was joking about getting a xbox but come sunday if its not back on im going to get one. I dont give a crap about paying $60.00 year as long as i can play 12 months out of the year. I love playstation but io also love playing online and this is crap

The quote from Sony, on Tuesday, was "we expect to have some services up and running within a week." That's rather vague. It could mean you'll be gaming tomorrow. It could mean you'll be able to sign in and change your password on Tuesday afternoon. It could mean nothing, considering that Sony expected nine days ago to have PSN back online in a "a day or two."

But I take your point (however crudely put), and added some clarification to that part of the post.

Take it from me, someone who's job it is to not only 'build' new network infastructure, but make them secure as well, Sony are economical with the truth. It DOES NOT take this long to builfd the Network, even from scratch. The 'day or two' they originally notified us of was more accurate, IF they were doing what they said they were. Clearly, they are not. This is taking, way way too long for just a Network build. They clearly have other issues which they are not telling us about. Sony would know, BY THE HOUR, how long it would be before they could fire up the Network again. However, we have NOT had a timeline update for 3 DAYS!!!! It is a dishonest and disgraceful way to treat loyal customers

furthermore bro the only reason xbox had the upper hand in sales a while back is because a lot of users preffered to buy xbox over a ps3 and play offline on a hacked xbox, due to the fact ps3 wasn't hacked back than.

BUT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IT HAS ANYTHING to do with quality lol.

XBox is ages behind ps3 (the console itself not necessarily the live system)

Yes not only would it hurt Sony but think of all the game titles not being bought right now. this is going to hurt alot more companies than just Sony. Even if its not down for months but just weeks this is going to be a loss for the industry. I hope the hacks get caught and made examples of. This should also be a lesson to haters of "Big Buisness". When you hurt buisness lots of people connected to that buisness suffers.

You ppl that are blaming Sony for this are on glue. It's not their fault that some peices of crap decided to hack the network for their gain. Marlarch if you think it's that easy to build a network infastructure like PSN and only takes a couple days, your crazy. Somehow I doubt your building networks as big as PSN. Even if the sony network security was a little weak, still it still don't give anyone the right to hack it. If you think this is what Sony wanted your all smoking crack, get off the pipe. I hope they make an example of the hackers and put them in jail for years.

i believe sony kind of asked for this to happen. it's not very smart to attack hackers, especially ones that have the capability to do what was done. i am not saying that i think Geohot did this, but i am sure this was related to the lawsuit involving him. electronics get hacked, and most companies work to patch it and move on. but not sony. maybe the problem is, they cannot patch it, which could be why they chose to go to court. either way, i see sony as partly responsible for this happening.